I’m Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics at LIU Post in New York. I’ve published several articles in professional journals and magazines, including Barron’s, The New York Times, Japan Times, Newsday, Plain Dealer, Edge Singapore, European Management Review, Management International Review, and Journal of Risk and Insurance. I’ve have also published several books, including Collective Entrepreneurship, The Ten Golden Rules, WOM and Buzz Marketing, Business Strategy in a Semiglobal Economy, China’s Challenge: Imitation or Innovation in International Business, and New Emerging Japanese Economy: Opportunity and Strategy for World Business. I’ve traveled extensively throughout the world giving lectures and seminars for private and government organizations, including Beijing Academy of Social Science, Nagoya University, Tokyo Science University, Keimung University, University of Adelaide, Saint Gallen University, Duisburg University, University of Edinburgh, and Athens University of Economics and Business. Interests: Global markets, business, investment strategy, personal success.

Why Good People Cannot Get And Keep Good Jobs

Of all the questions raised in today’s business world, one stands out: Why good people —people with demonstrated competence and an exceptional ability to connect to other people–cannot get and keep good jobs?

It depends on who you ask.

Business groups usually blame government regulations that raise the cost of hiring and retaining people. They also blame traditional college education, which doesn’t adequately prepare students for the demands of prospective employers.

As for education experts, they point to the lack of the right college career offices to match graduates with prospective employers.

“Until recently, colleges have not felt much need to help launch the careers of new graduates,” writes Jeffrey J. Selingo. “Many follow the same tired playbook year after year—a career office tucked away in a corner of the campus, employer fairs, visits from corporate recruiters, and then, six months or so after commencement, a survey of graduates, few of whom respond (yet that doesn’t stop colleges from publicizing the amazingly high percentage of their graduates with jobs, including, though they may not make this evident, those working the coffee line at StarbucksStarbucks).”

Labor experts point to a student bias for four-year college vis-à-vis professional education, and say that has created a labor market paradox — a big surplus of job seekers with university degrees, and a big shortage of job seekers with practical skills… like computer support specialists, electrical technicians, respiratory therapists, and so on. That’s why Elka Torpey, author of “Certificates: A fast track to careers” published in Occupational Outlook Quarterly, argues that a professional certificate is a good alternative to a college degree.

Business consultants like P. McCrea point to another factor — cheap government money, which has turned education from an investment into speculation, causing a misalignment between what students study and what prospective employers demand. “When workers emerge from their initial education and find jobs,” he writes, “they’ll soon learn what skills can drive their careers forward; that’s the time for graduate school or further training courses. That’s when speculation turns into investment: a known need, and then a wise outlay to meet it.”

In Why Good People Cannot Get Jobs, Professor Peter Cappelli of Wharton School blames employers, who are unwilling to pay the right salary for right talent. But he also identifies two changes in the corporate hiring process that make it more likely for employers to miss good people. The first change is the shift of hiring responsibility from top management, which usually sees the big picture (i.e. the general and the specific skills and the personality prospective hires bring to the organization), to lower management , which sees only the small picture (i.e. the specific skills the individual can bring to an individual project).

Worse, lower management tends to micromanage the workplace; and fails to provide adequate training for career advancement. That’s why many good employees find it difficult to get along with their supervisors, feeling that their human capital is underappreciated and underutilized — and end up looking for another job elsewhere.

The second change noted by Cappelli is the increasing use of computerized screening of applicants, which senses key words that reveal specific skills of candidates but leaves out general skills and personality traits.

Obviously, each argument has its own merits, and is supported by plenty of statistics. That’ why it is difficult to come up with a single answer to the question.

One thing is certain, however: Good people, in the broad sense, are those who make a company great.

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One of the major factors related these types of employees are they are not into those dirty politics as these people believe in their performance not with back biting or pulling legs of somebody. These people never get into somebody else’s business as they work the organisation whom they are being hired.

Many people who are surviving in this dirty corrupted corporate world is who knows how to do dirty politics & how to manuplate things & this is across globe.

I agree with Sharad Sachdeva with respect to nepotism. Some people may find the very nature of “social networking” aimed at securing a job an action that robs them of their merit. I perceive social networking as the practice of cultivating fake friendship with purpose for one’s only self interest. I think it to be a cynical and hypocritical practice. How different is it from France pre-revolution? At that time only those who were able to ingratiate themselves with the local Noble were rewarded with job, money, or with the benefit of the company of a “higher” class. Nepotism allows too much room for the whims of those who happen to be in a position of making a hiring decision. The hiring process, completed through a job application, is supposed to take away as much individuality as possible, making it a choice agreed upon by different members of a company, for the good of the company, which ultimately has the goal of translating into value for shareholders.

I agree with the fact that too much emphasis is placed an a 4 years degree. However, would a professional education provide a student with the same potential for income as a 4 years degree would? I do not have an answer for my question, but it seems to me that college degrees are perceived as having greater potential –also in terms of continuing education– than a professional degree would.